Monday, August 30, 2010

Yesterday, when I wrote a post about my favorite pencils and other drawing tools, I forgot to mention my ever favorite 'eraser sock', or 'gumsok', as I call it in Dutch. (The official name of this thing is 'Dry Cleaning Pad', by the way). I first discovered the gumsok at the framer's, where it was used to erase smudges of the paper matting. Regular erasers can leave smears if you press too hard, but the gumsok does it's job perfect; -oh no, I start to sound like a gumsok salesperson!- the fabric pad is filled with powdered rubber and is ideal for cleaning large surfaces.The gumsok also looks a bit like a slug. Even more so if you glue two googly eyes on the end of the slug. Er, sok!Anyway, great tool.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Matchbox covers! Remember those? (See the links to the older matchbox posts*). Well, I certainly did when I picked up one of my Matchbox Cover Collection Scrapbooks today. It's time to share some new designs. Below the first selection from the third book.*Older matchbox cover posts: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6.

Two colours, great effect; 'The Mountain', first cover of this post, is printed with only red and gold. Although mostly printed in this signal colour, the smart use of the red creates a nice illusion of depth. Wonderful type as well. 'Lotto', the second cover, mixes a light blue and a purple into three printing colours, and I love the 'Morza' ship for it's simple, graphic solution.

Anti-alcohol covers -like these three Dutch covers above- can be found regularly in my matchbox collection. The first cover (with the green print) tells the viewer to Not Drink Alcohol. I didn't know what to make of the illustration in the middle but I think they wanted it to look like a man holding another (sitting) man up by the back of his coat. The text in the middle can be translated into something like 'Fighting against alcohol is a good deed to others'.The second one, with the badly drawn scene, has the line 'Alcohol Ruins' written on it. The illustration is awkward; the drunk lady dropped her groceries and the drunk man shaved off his hair and beard. I think...The last cover is one from the serie 'dark & ominous'. Slogans on these covers range from 'Alcohol is the demolisher of the joy of life' to 'Sport and alcohol are enemies', all placed in this cross-like design. The texts don't really impress me but the cold and rigid look of these covers have the most anti-alcohol feel to my taste.

These fashion photo's from the late sixties make me wonder what directions the photographer gave to these models. To the girl in the white cardigan; '...Baby, you're not a happy Heidi, you're a disappointed Heidi! ...You don't like goats! ...You hate mountains!'

I recently started working on a studio for a day a week to focus on a project. It's still a little early to tell you all about it, but the plan is to have a serie of pencil drawings finished by next year summer. Until then I will post some details every now and then, starting with this one above; cat & cabbage.

Speaking of pencils, I wanted to show you some my favorite tools -see photo below.

When making a drawing I prefer to work with soft pencils. I start sketching with an HB mechanical pencil, which always has a nice, sharp point. Then I decide where the most dark bits of the scene will be and use a 3B pencil to colour them. After that I continue to play with 'darks' and 'lights', leaving parts blank, making gradients (with my fingertips or a tortillion - the latter's not on the photo) or creating pitch dark parts or shadows with a 8B pencil.

One of the tools I can't imagine drawing without is the 'blast from the past' eraser shield (on photo, left, bottom). This device was part of my technical pen set. Those 'Rapidographs' are long gone but the shield is still a great help when I need to erase small bits in my drawing, without smudging or erasing more than I'd want.

I'm also a big fan of those old fashioned, red & blue Faber-Castell 'pencil/ink' erasers. They erase without too much eraser 'dust', small cuts of eraser (for detailed erasing -on photo, left) stay compact and don't break easily and, last but not least, they look good. Just how I think an eraser should look.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Little Me drawing in Artis, the Amsterdam Zoo. Judging by the type of 'fence', it looks like I'm drawing a porcupine or the like. The condor was my favorite though. With feltpen on pink paper, for extra cuteness;(These images can be found in Rock Candy, the must have overview of my artwork!)

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Mes Petit Choux (french for 'my little darlings') is one of my latest mixed media paintings. It is a scene from the afterlife as I see it; just like normal life but dead and desolate. This piece is made for the BLAB! 'Afterlife' group show, which will open at Copro Gallery, September 11, 2010. Lot's of great artist will be joining in. I'm happy to be part of the show! More info right here.